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State's attorney's latest filing says drop charge, free McCullough

By KATIE SMITH-
ksmith@shawmedia.com

April 12, 2016

Danielle Guerra – dguerra@shawmedia.com

Caption

Jack D. McCullough, 76, looks back at Maria Ridulph's brother Charles Ridulph as he speaks while McCullough appears before DeKalb County Associate Judge William Brady for a hearing on McCullough's petition for post-conviction relief on Tuesday, March 29, 2016, in the DeKalb County Courthouse in Sycamore, Illinois. DeKalb County State's Attorney Richard Schmack last week said it wasn't possible for McCullough to have abducted and murdered 7-year-old Maria Ridulph on Dec. 3, 1957.

McCullough’s lawyers submitted an amended post-conviction petition late Monday, and requested a new trial, at which McCullough, 76, would be allowed to present new evidence.

But a new trial likely wouldn’t be necessary because Schmack has said he agrees McCullough was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 7-year-old Maria Ridulph and that his predecessor as state’s attorney, Clay Campbell knowingly introduced false testimony and withheld evidence during the trial.

McCullough is scheduled to appear before DeKalb County Judge William Brady on Friday.

Campbell has declined to comment on the case since Schmack’s March 24 filing.

Despite pleadings from McCullough’s attorneys, Shaun Van Horn and Gabriel Fuentes, to have McCullough released April 1, Brady said he would not rush the process. Since there have been no cases like McCullough’s to set a precedent, Brady refused to make a ruling.

“I have some obligation to make sure I understand the position of both parties,” Brady said in court April 1. “I don’t just have your opinion or your client’s opinion, and the state’s opinion. I also have the opinion of a trial judge and an appellate court. I think it’s premature for me to start commenting on what I think about any of that.”

McCullough was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2012, and his murder conviction was upheld by the 2nd District Appellate Court in 2015. Both the trial and appellate courts determined police reports from the time Maria was abducted were properly excluded from the trial because they were hearsay and the people who compiled them could not be cross-examined.

In a March filing, however, Schmack argued that the timeline established by police reports from 1957 and ’58, show Maria was kidnapped between 6:45 and 6:55 p.m., not around 6 p.m., as prosecutors had argued at the 2012 trial.

Recently found records from Illinois Bell show that McCullough – who at the time was 18 and known as John Tessier – made a call from the downtown Rockford post office at 6:57 p.m. that day, Schmack said.

“The FBI accurately concluded in 1957 that it is an absolute impossibility for anyone to have placed a collect call from inside this public building in Rockford, Illinois, at 6:57 p.m. and also to have participated in the abduction of Maria Ridulph in Sycamore, and there was nothing incorrect about their conclusion that [McCullough] was not involved,” the amended petition read.

“My sister Maria was snatched away, raped and murdered, abandoned in the woods,” Ridulph, 70, of Sycamore, wrote in his request. “And now, Richard Schmack has abandoned her yet again and he has done so for the wrong reasons.”